EZ, do you have a rulebook? Do you carry it with you? Do you know the rules? Your $10 nonmember fee gives you a rulebook this year. Why would you think anyone could possibly play in a competition without one? Ask any TD and they or their team have spent many hours preparing the course beyond what the Park Dept does for maintaining the course to provide a nice experience at a PDGA event. They take pride in running their events well and maybe better than a non-sanctioned event because they are representing the PDGA.

Most rec players do little volunteering and in fact can be a negative influence on the course not putting trash in the cans or putting glass bottles in the trash cans thinking they're doing the right thing only to have some others raid the trash cans and bust them on the tee pads. That $10 is NOTHING and is barely a 'Thank You' to the people who really do things to make your course and tournament experience better. And those who are members benefit from the extra fee the non-members pay since that's additional money the PDGA uses to fund programs that might not occur otherwise.

I think the PDGA needs to go with a totally new way of pushing the sport forward!

Create lower tiered events C-B that will be geared towards Am participation (also create TD incentives to promote good events). These events have at most a min of $500 added cash (Cs have none and payout 85% anyway).

Then have a NT tour that is scheduled a little better and maybe setup in 4 stages of 3 events or something. Before these events have 3-4 top Pros go out and do promotional events for the event in order to attract spectators.

Also we should have 2-4 Majors as we do now with worldsbeing the top event with a player boosted purse. $1 per entry would mean the worlds attendees would be those who put in the most and they would see the benefit of what was put in. This would also make taking the trip more attractive (esp when money is tighter) as paying a few thousand dollars to go is a big thing when you can't possibly break even (unless you get top 10 in pro).

I don''t know why I can go to a B-tier and get 3 times my entry back for being halfway up in the cash (top 20%) yet worlds you barely get your entry back. B tier you will pay $75 and get $250-300 for 3rd or so in open beating 80% of the field. Worlds on the other hand you pay $250 to get in and then make the same amount as that B-tier ($285) even though you likely shot better golf. I just don't see how our local B-tiers can pay so much better in return compared to what should be our premier event.

It's apparent you want to play PDGA events so they must have value to you since you don't need to play PDGA events to play disc golf. Otherwise, why would you care? There are many things I want but can't justify paying for them. It's simply a value judgment. The $10 is what our members have determined is a fair value to charge non-members in relation to a full membership. You get to decide if you want to pay that badly enough to play in the event. It's actually irresponsible for the PDGA to charge less than that because then even fewer will join who are strictly interested in getting direct benefits. Of course, your other alternative this year is to suggest that your TDs run Super Class events like we're doing here in Minnesota. There's no $10 non-member fee this year to encourage non-members to try events..

Chuck is Right !!!! In my opinion , every player should carry a Rule Book !!!!!

For 10..00? Someones making a decent living off rulebooks....

Easy there EZ, when I joined the PDGA, we didn't have the choice of a 10.00 trial membership to see if we liked playing in sanction tournaments or not. We had to pay the membership fee in full. It's not a ten dollar rule book. It's a rule book so that every competitor in a sanctioned event will have the rules at their disopsal.

You still have the freedom of choice, to join or not? You have to be the judge of the value of membership. If you deem it to be unworthy of the cost associated, then quite simply, do not join the PDGA.

lets see there is 12500 members and at 50 bucks a pop that's 625,000 that is a large amount of money. If only 5 people are getting paid and it only takes one man (or women) to run and be IT for a website and no one is getting a magazine? then I guess all that money went into the discgolf center? wow have not been there yet but it must be Nirvana. That's not even counting the extra 10 they are getting every weekend from nonmembers. Sorry folks just can't justify where its all going? Can members look at the current budget of the PDGA to see exactly where all the dollars are being spent? Maybe this would help people to swallow that horse pill we are being fed.

The amount of money in the budget still doesn't cover the thousands of volunteer hours spent on a national level on behalf of disc golfers and members. Board members and all of the committee people do not get compensation along with things like time I spend here and other sites on behalf of the PDGA as a volunteer. Until those who do actual woirk to advance the sport get paid, don't expect more free benefits. Do you really expect you should be able to play free in the parks and contribute little? Why is it OK to pay for discs and bags but not for the services to run events, design courses, promote the sport? Is it because you can't hold it in your hand? It's never truly free although you would think it should be by the reaction of players when they have to pay even a little bit toward's the sport they love.